Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#1

Post by brij0102 » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 1:14 PM UTC

With Oracle’s new terms for commercial Java license, are commercial software being rewritten to another language? Time to bring back C :-)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#2

Post by thedevindevops » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

I don't actually write in Java but I keep hearing about: https://openjdk.java.net/

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#3

Post by umen » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

Im interested very much in this subject also , what is the future of java . as java dev for 15 years i don't know what will be with java in about 10 years .

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#4

Post by umen » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

thedevindevops wrote: post #2

I don't actually write in Java but I keep hearing about: https://openjdk.java.net/

no good at all .. its Red Hat product now , which they can decide to not support it any more when it not going to meet their business model

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#5

Post by baud147258 » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

thedevindevops wrote: post #2

I don't actually write in Java but I keep hearing about: https://openjdk.java.net/

We're using it when compiling our code, but our software deliveries are bundled with the amazon Corretto (because we already have a contract with Amazon because of AWS, so getting security updates shouldn't be an issue) and our installer offer the option to use another JRE, so our clients can use any JRE 11; but for Oracle 11 JRE, they'll have to pay Oracle themselves.

To answer the OP, we didn't rewrite anything, just switched to a no-cost JRE. And since we did it at the same time of the Java 8 -> 11 switch, there were no extra dev costs.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#6

Post by nullwasamistake » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

Not here, we've migrated to OpenJDK binaries maintained by Red Hat and Azul (depending on OS). They're still FOSS so it hasn't affected us, yet at least.

I have never seen an issue from switching Java SE->OpenJDK. We did the whole company in one day without outages. I'm convinced that incompatiblies don't exist in practice.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#7

Post by adl » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

No need to rewrite anything. There is an excellent summary here: https://medium.com/@javachampions/java-is-still-free-2-0-0-6...

the tl;dr is that there are multiple OpenJDK vendors now, Oracle just happens to charge for their JDK distribution, but you can choose from several vendors (Azul, Red Hat, IBM, AdoptOpenJDK, Amazon Correto, etc)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#8

Post by icedchai » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

It's probably cheaper to just use OpenJDK.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#9

Post by jetti » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

umen wrote: post #4

thedevindevops wrote: post #2

I don't actually write in Java but I keep hearing about: https://openjdk.java.net/

no good at all .. its Red Hat product now , which they can decide to not support it any more when it not going to meet their business model

It's open source, so if Red Hat stops supporting it then others can pick it up. On top of that, there are 8 other groups that are offering builds which means you can just switch.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone rewriting Java code due to new license costs?

#10

Post by theandrewbailey » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

I hardly ever write Java for work anymore, but the situation has inspired me to start looking into .net for the first time since college. Unfortunately, the ASP.net ecosystem on Linux is still a bit lacking compared to JavaEE (or is it JakartaEE yet?).